


Enough or Not...It Will Have To Do

by lit_chick08



Category: The Americans
Genre: Arranged Marriage, Dysfunctional Family, F/M, Mentions past sexual abuse, Preseries, Spies & Secret Agents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-03
Updated: 2013-02-03
Packaged: 2017-11-28 03:40:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/669860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lit_chick08/pseuds/lit_chick08
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He tries to kiss her. He always does. Elizabeth turns her head so his lips meet her cheek, and the softest of sighs escapes Phillip’s lips as he understands that this is not about romance, not about a husband and wife loving each other so much they want a child. This is business, another mission; it is not personal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Enough or Not...It Will Have To Do

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from "Anna Karenina" by Leo Tolstoy.

Their directive came on a regular day. Elizabeth is making supper with the television droning away in the background when Phillip returns from the pick-up. His face is not nearly as inscrutable as he likes to think it is; for a trained KGB agent, Elizabeth often thinks he cannot control his emotions very well.

“They want us to have a child.”

Elizabeth does not pause as she chops celery; she is much better at pretending than Phillip is. “When?”

“As soon as possible.”

She nods, dumping the contents of the cutting board into the pot. “I’ll start keeping count of the days.”

Something pained flits across Phillip’s face for a moment before disappearing; she sees the same expression when she provides him with a schedule of the days she is most likely to conceive. Though they have slept beside each other for years now, Elizabeth thinks she can count on one hand the number of times Phillip has been inside of her. It is not something she particularly enjoys, the act of procreation, but it is a necessary evil. Often she lies there and thinks of the things she needs to accomplish for both of her lives. Phillip wishes they did it more often. Elizabeth can tell by the way he touches her, the gentle way he tries to kiss her; it is nothing like the men she lures into betraying their country with a smile and swivel of her hips. There’s a softness to Phillip that makes Elizabeth wonder how he was selected for this mission, for this _lifestyle_.

Elizabeth prefers Phillip inside her to the targets. Unlike those men, he does not pull her hair or squeeze too tightly; he is never rough with her and doesn’t grunt obscene names for her against her skin as he thrusts. She does not have to feign moans of enjoyment, doesn’t have to play the seductress; with Phillip, she does not have to do anything she doesn’t want. So often what happened in training enters her mind with the other men who see her as nothing but a means to an end, but it seldom does with Phillip. As she watches him undress in the muted light of their bedroom, she thinks she could kill him if he ever dared try what the colonel did.  
He tries to kiss her. He always does. Elizabeth turns her head so his lips meet her cheek, and the softest of sighs escapes Phillip’s lips as he understands that this is not about romance, not about a husband and wife loving each other so much they want a child. This is business, another mission; it is not personal.

“Elizabeth,” he murmurs against her ear as he slips between her thighs, his fingers lightly stroking the skin of her legs. The press of him against her is familiar if not entirely welcome; she catches his rhythm easily, raising her hips to meet his thrusts. It never takes long; from the way Phillip pulls away afterward, his face covered in shadows, Elizabeth suspects her lack of reaction bothers him. She does not know what he expects. They only play at being married; they are not actually in love.

“Do you want a boy or a girl?” Phillip asks when the room is dark and she is ensconced beneath the covers.

“It doesn’t matter,” she answered, giving him her back as she closes her eyes.

It takes nearly eight months before she finally conceives, eight months of taking her temperature and painstakingly documenting when she is fertile. Phillip grins broadly when she tells him, and Elizabeth can admit she is happy at having finally fulfilled the mission goal. When she says it to Phillip, his smile instantly melts as he echoes, “The mission goal.”

“What would you call it?”

Irritation floods his face. “ _Our baby_.”

“Don’t be sentimental.”

Elizabeth does not know where he goes that night, but he comes back in a cab, reeking of cigarettes and vodka. She doesn’t ask; it is not her concern. 

She hates being pregnant. Her body feels cumbersome, and there is a clumsiness in her limbs Elizabeth has never experienced. The neighbors cluck over her growing middle, pressing their hands against it and cooing predictions over the sex. Phillip brings home furniture he spends the evenings assembling, setting up the nursery entirely on his own. Some mornings Elizabeth stands in the doorway and looks at the collection of things. It all seems too much and she tells him so one stiflingly hot summer night.

“There’s no such thing as too much in America,” Phillip drawls, lifting his glass of lemonade as if to punctuate the statement. “Relax.”

Elizabeth isn’t sure if it is a side effect of the pregnancy or not, but every time Phillip tells her to relax, she has an overwhelming urge to stab him through the throat.

Her labor is relatively short. The nurses and doctor cluck over her, repeatedly offering pain medication, but Elizabeth refuses. Pain medication means lowered inhibitions, and Elizabeth will not potentially compromise their covers for some brief relief. She has suffered through pain before, has been trained to withstand torture; for thousands of years, women gave birth without medication, and Elizabeth can do it too. They keep Phillip outside the room, and she can picture him pacing the waiting room the way he does the kitchen when he thinks she is not watching him. Neither of them is built for inaction; that is not their purpose.

The child screams fiercely as it slips from her body. Elizabeth lies back against the pillow, catching her breath and focusing on managing her pain, while the nurses tend to the child. 

“It’s a girl!” the doctor announces, and Elizabeth nods distractedly. It doesn’t much matter if the child is a boy or a girl; it is part of their cover, nothing more and nothing less.

The girl is small with wisps of ruddy hair on her head, her mouth puckered as she whines. Elizabeth has never been around children; in the life that came before, she was an only child without a desire to tend to other people’s children. She wonders if Phillip had siblings, if he has experience with babies; she knows if she asked, he’d tell her, but Elizabeth will never ask.

Phillip’s hands shake when he is finally allowed into her room, and he cradles the baby carefully in his arms. His smile is wide and free, and the nurses tease him about how he is already wrapped around their daughter’s finger. Phillip laughs and looks down at the baby, and Elizabeth sees it happening already, the smudging of the line which separates who they actually are with who they are pretending to be. _She is not truly our child_ , Elizabeth wants to say. _She is a bit of detail, a way of hiding in plain sight_.

But she doesn’t, of course. She is supposed to forget what came before Phillip.

Elizabeth tells him he can name the baby. She hands him the pen to fill out the birth certificate, and it is not until the actual certificate is sent to them in the mail a few weeks later that she learns the full name Phillip gave their daughter: Paige Elizabeth Jennings. She is not sure what to make of him giving her assumed name to their daughter, and when she asks him about it, Phillip shrugs.

“She’s your daughter. Daughters are named after their mothers all the time.”

It bothers her, Paige wearing her false name. Elizabeth cannot pinpoint why; it is a perfectly American name, a name no one will ever question. But on Paige, the name Elizabeth feels like a lie in a way it never has for her. _She’s innocent_ , Elizabeth thinks one evening as she looks into Paige’s eyes as she hungrily devours her bottle. _We have brought an innocent child into this._

She does not know why she mentions it to Phillip, but he looks at her in that solemn way of his and swears, “We’ll protect her.”

Phillip is a better father than she is a mother. Elizabeth thinks it should bother her more, Paige preferring her father to her mother, but there is an easy way to Phillip’s parenting that Elizabeth does not have. He can tell from a single cry what Paige wants, whether she is wet or hungry or tired; Paige squeals with excitement when she sees Phillip coming, hustling on hands and knees to reach him. “Daddy’s girl,” the neighbors christen her, and Elizabeth wonders if she was like this with her father before he marched off to his death.

“You’re very good with her,” she offers the night of Paige’s first birthday as Phillip sets her in her crib. The house is finally quiet after a parade of neighbors and coworkers came over to celebrate Paige’s days, bringing with them so many useless toys and accessories, Elizabeth could scarcely keep from wrinkling her nose at such blatant consumerism. Phillip has finally removed the ridiculous party hat he wore all day, and he smiles softly at Paige before turning to face Elizabeth.

“She’s very easy to be good with.” He brushes a lock of hair from Elizabeth’s face, and she wills herself to stand still, to not upset him this evening. “She’s so much like you.”

The words do something to Elizabeth, her throat unexpectedly tightening. “You think so?”

“All the time.” He kisses her then, a soft brush of lips against the corner of her mouth, and Elizabeth wonders when precisely he decided to stop trying to kiss her, to stop _trying_.

“I don’t ever want her to know who we really are,” she whispers in bed that night, the words causing Phillip to turn to face her. “Promise me we’ll never tell her.”

Phillip’s hand twitches as if he wishes to touch her again, but he curls it into the comforter; any other time, Elizabeth would be grateful he has realized she doesn’t need meaningless touches for comfort. “Never,” he vows, and she believes him for perhaps the first time in their marriage.

Elizabeth tries to sleep that night, but all she can think of is Paige, slumbering in her crib, safe and happy, as American as apple pie. 

In the morning, she enters the kitchen to find Phillip standing at the kitchen window, Paige balanced on his hip, as he points out some bird. Paige is babbling, Phillip responding as if they are real words, and Elizabeth watches them for a moment, unsure whether or not she wants to join them, unsure if she even knows _how_. The KGB did not train her to be a mother; they trained her to be a killer.

“Mama!” Paige calls excitedly, waving her chubby hands. “Bird! Mama, bird!”

Elizabeth pastes a smile on her face, crossing the room to stand beside them so Paige can show her the animal in question. As she cranes her neck to see, Phillip’s hand comes to rest on her shoulder and, for the first time, Elizabeth does not immediately shake it off.

As their daughter points out the bird, Elizabeth looks at Phillip, who returns her gaze steadily. Elizabeth does not know what they will be asked to do in the name of Russia, if there will be more children, more murders, more sweaty men she is forced to fuck for information, but Elizabeth _does_ know Phillip will always be by her side. 

It simultaneously comforts and terrifies her.


End file.
